Pats win! Pats win!

All this talk of dynasty takes away from the week-in, week-out effort that this team has demonstrated during the course of the season to get to this point, such that the outcome of the big game this year was a foregone conclusion, and otherwise ambivalent Superbowl watchers were rooting for the Eagles just to cheer for the little guy and spread it around a bit.

In central Illinois, the Cardinals and Bears were the nearest teams but neither of them were doing much of anything during the '70's, so us kids would just jump on the bandwagon of whatever team was winning at the time. I was variously a Dolphins fan, Redskins fan, Steelers fan, and had the coats and belt buckles to prove it. And somewhere right now in some backwater part of the country there's a bunch of kids who are Patriots fans just because they're the hot team right now. Not the most glamorous bunch, but still a bunch of clutch players who can't help getting in the hall of fame eventually with this kind of consistent behavior.

After seeing the Red Sox break the curse, nothing the Pats can do will measure up to that, but they set the stage three years ago with their first win and I think helped people here think that if the Pats could do it, so could the Red Sox. Maybe this year I'll remember to bring the camera to the parade.